class SimpleCalculator:
def add(self, a, b):
return a + b
def subtract(self, a, b):
return a - b
def multiply(self, a, b):
return a * b
def divide(self, a, b):
if b == 0:
raise ValueError("Cannot divide by zero")
return a / b
def square_root(self, a):
if a < 0:
raise ValueError("Cannot calculate square root of a negative number")
return a ** 0.5QTM 350 - Data Science Computing
Lecture 13 - AI-Assisted Programming with GitHub Copilot (and More)
In this lecture, we will:
- Discuss the pros and cons of AI-assisted programming with GitHub Copilot
- Learn how to install Copilot in the command line
- Show some useful features of Copilot, including:
- Code generation
- Code explanations
- Use of
@extensions for specific tasks (new feature!) - Optimisation or simplification of code
- Run tests and examples
- Learn how to use agent mode to automate tasks
Step 1: Install GitHub CLI
- To use GitHub Copilot in the CLI, you need:
- An active GitHub Copilot subscription
- GitHub CLI installed
- The Copilot CLI extension
- MacOS and Linux users can install GitHub CLI with Homebrew:
- Windows users can install GitHub CLI with Chocolatey:
Or download the GitHub CLI installer
To install the extension, run:
Example 01: Stop struggling with terminal commands 🖥️
- Let’s start with
gh copilot explainto get an explanation of a command - The command below searches for log files and then searches within them for the word
errorfind / -name '*.log' -exec grep 'error' {} +
Example 01: Stop struggling with terminal commands 🖥️
- Now let’s use
gh copilot suggestto generate a command ghcs "create three txt files with names test1.txt, test2.txt, and test3.txt", then add the content "Hello, world!" to each file, then list the files, show the content of each file, and delete them"
Example 01: Stop struggling with terminal commands 🖥️
Example 02: Stop struggling with Git 🐙
- Let’s see how Copilot can help with Git commands
ghcs "create a new branch called 'feature-branch', switch to it, create a new file called 'feature.txt', add some content to it, commit the changes, push the branch to the remote repository, and open a pull request"
Example 03: Stop struggling with GitHub CLI 🐙
ghcs "how can I use gh to create a new private repository on GitHub danilofreire/testing, clone it to my computer, add a README file, commit the changes, push the changes to the remote repository, and open a pull request?"
Example 04: Explain code 🤔
- Type
/explainfollowed by a code snippet to get an explanation. You can select the snippet directly in the terminal, then just type/explain
Example 05: Run tests 🧪
Example 06: Fix code 🛠
Example 07: Create new file and generate text/code 🚀
- Type
/newand pass the information about the file you want to create /new create a file.txt file with the first three lines of Homer's Odyssey
Example 08: Run code 🏃♂️
- You can use the
@terminalcommand to write and run code in the terminal. Click on the terminal icon to insert the code @terminal create a file titled test.py and add print("Hello, world!") using the command line
Example 09: Interact with GitHub 🐙
- You can use the
@githubcommand to interact with GitHub - For example, let’s see what are the latest 3 commits of this repository (
danilofreire/qtm350) - You can also use
@githubto create a new repository, open a pull request, and more
Example 10: Interact with VS Code 🚀
- You can use the
@vscodecommand to interact with VS Code - For example, let’s see how to open a new file in the editor
Example 11: Interact with the workspace 💻
- The
@workspacecommand allows you to interact with the workspace, which are the files and folders you have open in VS Code - For example, let’s ask it to list the files in the workspace
Example 11: Interact with the workspace 💻
- Another example: let’s ask it to find files that contains bash commands
- Click on the icons and they will open!
Last Example: Searching for text in files 📄
- You can use the
#filecommand to search for text in files - Combine it with the
@workspacecommand to search in all files in the workspace - Let’s search for Python code in this file
Summary
- GitHub Copilot can save you a lot of time and make you more productive (and it’s fun!)
- It is not perfect, but it is a good tool as it is 🤓
- You should also have a look at other AI coding tools, and I recommend you to try Cline and DeepSeek, as they work really well and can do much more than just code generation
- Also, please read more about AI agents and how they can be used in your projects
- I hope you will make good use of AI coding tools from now on 🤖
- Find out other uses for it, test the other tools available, and let me know what you think!
